Top 10 most pirated games for 2008

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stefan9

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I wonder when EA will finally get the message Securom doesn't work. 4 of their drm games make the top 10.

Top 10 Most Pirated Games of 2008
Written by Ernesto on December 04, 2008

As 2008 is slowly moving toward its end, we start taking a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. First up are games. As expected, Spore is by far the most downloaded game on BitTorrent, in part thanks to the DRM that came with the game.

spore pirated bittorrentTraditionally, games can’t compete with the most pirated movies and TV-shows in actual download numbers, but Spore came very close this year.

Only 10 days after the game’s launch date, already half a million people had downloaded the game. During the months after that, another million people obtained a copy of the game via BitTorrent. According to our estimates, Spore was downloaded 1.7 million times since early September, a record breaking figure for a game.

When we posted about the impressive download rate on Spore - inflated due to the DRM that was put into the game - EA doubted our statistics. EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn’t work, were buggy, or contained viruses. We wont deny that on badly moderated torrent sites, malicious torrents probably can be found. However, this constitutes less than 1% of the available torrents, and they are not added to our statistics.

Below is the list of the 10 most downloaded (PC) games on BitTorrent in 2008, with an estimated download count for each. In second place we see The Sims 2, also from the hands of Spore creator Will Wright. Assassins Creed completes the top 3 with just over a million downloads.

# game downloads released
torrentfreak.com
1 Spore (1,700,000) (Sept. 2008)
2 The Sims 2 (1,150,000) (Sept. 2004)
3 Assassins Creed (1,070,000) (Nov. 2007)
4 Crysis (940,000) (Nov. 2007)
5 Command & Conquer 3 (860,000) (Mar. 2007)
6 Call of Duty 4 (830,000) (Nov. 2007)
7 GTA San Andreas (740,000) (Jun. 2005)
8 Fallout 3 (645,000) (Oct. 2008)
9 Far Cry 2 (585,000) (Oct. 2008)
10 Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (470,000) (Oct. 2008)
Click to expand...

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2008-081204/
 
Surv0 wonder what their number would be if they take into about nzb's, i think nzb's are bigger than torrents.
 
Those numbers cant be accurate at all for actual piracy, biggest piracy numbers come from copying from a friend who got it from a friend who got it ......

eg. One person downloads 20 ppl get it from him
 
Ryansta said:
Those numbers cant be accurate at all for actual piracy, biggest piracy numbers come from copying from a friend who got it from a friend who got it ......

eg. One person downloads 20 ppl get it from him
Click to expand...

Maybe in SA but remember the US and the developed world has unlimited bandwith hence a lot more people will download it and in some cases pirates will download a game multiple times to prove a point.
 
Ryansta said:
Those numbers cant be accurate at all for actual piracy, biggest piracy numbers come from copying from a friend who got it from a friend who got it ......

eg. One person downloads 20 ppl get it from him
Click to expand...

Not true at all, 90% of countries that are not in civil war have uncapped or large cap accounts.

I can tell you now with all the various ways you can get games that there will be between 5m and 10m people downloading the game.

You have torrents,nzb's and handing out copies of games to friends.
 
But theres far less developed areas in the world. And those pirates are heavily out numbered by pc owners around the world who want the game but dont have internet or money.
 
You just need to look at Asia as a start, 2b people and you can more likely get new games pirated on the side corner for like 10 bucks or however much that equates to in their unit of currency. They cannot really track nzb's because you can get a program like usenext to create your own nzb so keeping track of nzb's is not easy.
 
But im saying people who get pirated games dont just use torrents, or nzb's or the internet at all. So those numbers are nowhere near accurate. The number between computer owners with internet and the computer owners without internet is huge around the world.
 
Ryansta said:
But im saying people who get pirated games dont just use torrents, or nzb's or the internet at all. So those numbers are nowhere near accurate. The number between computer owners with internet and the computer owners without internet is huge around the world.
Click to expand...

But this doesnt relate to the article at all. If you noticed they specifically said "downloaded". so the figures could be pretty accurate according to their site (and others that they counted).
 
ginggs said:
Is this because people who bought the game ended up having to download the cracked version as well?
Click to expand...

Yes and people launched anti drm spore campaign by downloading the pirated copy in mass as a form of protest.
 
poffle said:
But this doesnt relate to the article at all. If you noticed they specifically said "downloaded". so the figures could be pretty accurate according to their site (and others that they counted).
Click to expand...


Have you read the titile of the thread???
 
Yes, but i wasnt refering to the title... the article :p but it is still only downloads
 
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